Customer care counts

Industries such as banking and retail have been using advanced systems for improved customer relationship management for years now, making continually available customer care the norm rather than the exception. In comparison, the energy industry is something of a laggard. But an increasing number of forward-thinking utilities are now using customer communications management as a tool for enhancing the client-provider conversation – and realizing significant benefits.

Christopher R. Behrens is President and Chief Executive Officer of SourceLink, LLC. As the premier provider of results-driven communication solutions, Behrens fosters a client-centric business model at SourceLink.

Chris Warrington is the President of First Data Utilities, a provider of world-class utility customer information system software and innovative service-with-software outsourcing.

PE. In today’s utility industry climate, customer service must be both highly personalized and accessible. Why is this so important, and what challenges does it present to electric utility companies?

CW. The trend towards increased customer service accessibility has been driven by desire to reduce costs through lower cost service channels, deliver consistency, meet consumer demands for new service channels, and reduce pressure on the customer’s increasingly precious time. However, accessibility of service presents a number of challenges for utilities, including aging inflexible systems, difficulty integrating the service channels, difficulty changing processes, and significant cost. In addition, many companies have found it challenging to balance the demand for more automated accessible customer service with personalization as perceived depersonalization can dramatically decrease customer satisfaction.

Personalization of customer service is important as it not only impacts customer perceptions, but because it takes communications with utility customers beyond the transactional into engaging. The opportunities this presents are manifold: cross-selling; energy efficiency programs; loyalty programs; and personalized customer service representative (CSR) communications are just a few. However, personalization of customer service also brings significant challenges that fall into three categories: systems, processes and people. Firstly, many utilities face challenges in customer service personalization from legacy systems – not designed to handle targeted messaging, perform advanced segmentation and analytics, or deliver integrated communications over channels such as web, IVR and text messaging. Secondly, ensuring the right business processes are in place to ensure that although customized, that service is delivered consistently and within regulatory requirements can be challenging, particularly when compounded by inflexible systems-focused processes. Finally, it is challenging to ensure that call centre service representatives are well trained on your company, products, promotions and your issues – particularly if in a BPO outsourced environment.

CB. Industries such as banking, credit card and retail have successfully tapped into customer data to drive relevant, personalized communications and deliver accurate statements via mail and websites. These industries also provide robust websites with call center support to establish the norm of continually available customer care. For the utility industry, replicating this customer-focused model is challenging due to the prevalence of legacy CIS systems and the inherent difficulty of accessing and presenting customer data. However, there is significant opportunity to positively impact the customer service metrics of correct first billing and first call resolution through best-in-class outsourced solutions.

SourceLink helps utilities to improve the provisioning of the billing experience to encourage the timely paying of bills, web-based customer self-service and first call resolution. The improved billing experience begins with transforming the utility’s first line of communication – its first line of customer service – into an easy-to-read, accurate communication delivered to the utility customer’s mailbox or via e-presentment to the customer’s inbox. Further, e-presentment enables CSRs to view a customer’s bill in full fidelity to speed resolution of enquiries and achieve a higher percentage of first call resolution. Elevating the billing experience to the standards of customer-focused industries is a critical step for utilities to shift from a product-centered business model to a customer-centric model.

PE. Utilities must also manage growing customer sophistication by providing relevant information in real-time and offering bill delivery through the media channel of choice, while maximizing productivity and controlling costs. How can a customer communications management solution help, and what benefits does such a system offer?

CB. For our utility clients, we develop and execute phased CCM strategies. CCM starts with a consumer-friendly billing experience via all media channels. The paper statement is redesigned and formatted for clarity and readability for the customer and production efficiency for the utility. We then leverage the paper statement for e-presentment via an online utility account or email delivery to the customer – as well as e-presentment of customer statements to the call center to improve first call resolution. The second phase of CCM is upgrading your billing to a relationship-building experience and moving from the constraints of legacy CIS systems to a combination utility bill and community relations communication that complements a utility’s energy efficiency campaigns and other ‘good citizen’ initiatives. The ultimate future of CCM is a multimedia, multi-customer facing communications solution grounded in utility customer data insights or customer intelligence (both transaction and demographic). This data-driven communications solution moves the conversation from billing to the additional services that electric utilities will ultimately want to sell their customers.

CW. Pressure to offer customized and real-time information has led to the advancement of customer communications channels, particularly those using automated web-based, SMS and voice response technologies. An integrated communications management solution can help utilities drive inquiries through lower cost automated channels, improve responsiveness to customers, and improve effectiveness of marketing and cross-selling campaigns. With the advance of these technologies, many utilities focused on meeting customer demand for new communications channels, and have found themselves with an incompatible collection of systems with no synergies or back-end integration. While a customer communications management system addresses this issue by rolling a number of systems together, utilities may find themselves limited in their ability to deliver improved customer service by legacy CIS software, inflexible business processes, and analytics that do not maximise the potential of the new functionality. Rather than just implementing a dedicated CCM, utilities should consider their meter-to-cash lifecycle for the best opportunities to streamline and improve their customer service.

PE. To realize its full potential, CCM must be implemented enterprise-wide. Do you have any recommendations for successfully integrating customer communications management into a utility’s enterprise architecture? What are the key considerations?

CB. The difficulty and complexity of completely integrating workflows, processes and systems is daunting and costly. Yet few gains are possible without integration. Based on the advances of SML and web services technology, service oriented architecture (SOA) has emerged as a progressive technology to cost effectively create a service delivery platform over time. SOA has captured the attention of the global IT community as a more manageable solution to IT systems integration as it can be implemented in stages. The SOA approach allows utilities to focus on IT areas that have the most to gain from the features and functions that SOA enables, an approach much better suited to delivering short term returns on the significant investment to fully integrate the enterprise architecture. SOA provides the framework to build a robust service delivery platform to satisfy the data-driven requirements of effective CCM and to support the emerging and future technologies of real-time customer interactions. However, it is not a substitute for executive leadership and business process innovation to elevate the utility to a customer-centric business model that fully utilizes the power of integrated enterprise architecture.

CW. There are a number of barriers to implementing integrated customer communications functions including cost and complexity of integration, outdated and inflexible business processes, and difficult-to-upgrade legacy systems. Utilities that wish to avoid these barriers should explore outsourcing as a way to implement with reduced capital costs. Some utilities have chosen business process outsourcing (BPO) as an alternate route to in-house software implementations. Unfortunately, BPO for utility customer service brings with it a new set of issues and risks that many utilities will find unacceptable. A new model for service-with-software outsourcing allows utilities to take advantage of CIS software, which remains current with market and regulatory requirements through regular enhancements. In this model, the CIS manages the customer communications through optimized business processes and delivers communications through services such as intelligent bill print, e-billing, inbound/outbound IVR, web self-service, and mobile SMS. The customer communications services are integrated and managed by the vendor reducing the cost, risk and time of implementation, and providing a flexible platform that is designed to support future developments in communications technology. Furthermore, through service oriented architecture, and an advanced integration hub, service-with-software solutions facilitate the interaction of systems across the enterprise, making specialised systems easier to integrate back to the core customer communications and information systems.

PE. The advent of the smart grid promises greater two-way communication between utilities and customers. How can the smart grid concept lead to better communications between electricity providers and users? And what technologies will be key in making this promise a reality?

CW. Technology wise, consumer communication and choice is enabled by smart grid technologies such as demand response, smart meters and SCADA. When integrated with smart appliances, analysis of load, pricing and usage enables automated appliance management for improved energy efficiency and reduced cost. Furthermore, as trends towards energy consumerization develop, the ability to integrate and support alternate customer generated loads seamlessly will be a key focus of smart grids.

With the right combination of technology deployed, utilities will be able to communicate with customers using two-way functionality to notify customers of rate changes, outages, service changes and facilitate customer choice. There is research to suggest that consumers will actively use this technology to improve their energy efficiency and reduce their energy bills. However, the level of home automation that develops through energy companies will depend on the business case that evolves in comparison to telecom and cable providers who are also exploring this area. With SOA and advanced-automation systems, truly visionary smart-grid visions are theoretically possible. Data from metering and SCADA systems will be integrated fully with CIS, OMS, and asset-management systems, and intelligent processes will make full use of that data in restoring outages, optimizing the efficiency of assets and giving customers all the information they need to make decisions about their utility services.

CB. At the core of customer communications management is data intelligence that drives relevant, accurate, personalized communications and real-time data access that supports customer-initiated service interactions from billing resolution to service changes. Smart grid technology will enable such a dynamic utility-customer relationship, including AMI/AMR and MDM. It will enable utilities to measure, compare, visualize and act on detailed energy consumption data. Smart meters, smart thermostats and related web services will enable the utility customer to monitor their energy consumption and potentially control their energy spending.

Smart grid technology will enable utilities to change the conversation of customer communications from high energy prices to demand-response programs, time-to-use metering and critical peak pricing for customers willing to manage their energy consumption. Literally every customer interaction will be driven by technology. Utilities will have the opportunity to leverage the customer data intelligence that is derived from smart grid technology to cultivate and expand energy customer relationships – a huge opportunity to effectively address emerging environmental concerns while also meeting community and shareholder expectations.

PE. Finally, where do you see the utilities sector headed next in terms of its customer communications management? What will be the key trends and developments?

CW. The utilities sector is headed for significant change with continued regulatory pressures, and significant investment into next-generation technologies like AMI and smart-grids. Utilities also face increasing pressure from an aging workforce supporting their legacy systems. Pressure to reduce costs, and conflicting demands on capital expenditure continue to make business cases for customer-facing technologies difficult. The combination of these trends will impact the way customer communications and other customer-facing services are addressed. Utilities will turn to outsourcing to overcome these issues to enable improved customer service and communications, at a reduced cost-to-serve.

CB. Overall, the relationship between the utility and the customer will be increasingly dynamic with interactions varying from online self-service to multiple customer-facing channels. Utilities will be challenged to elevate the utility customer relationship to include the voice of the customer. This will be accomplished through the establishment of VoC programs (relationship tracking, interaction monitoring, continuous listening and more) and the creation of a chief customer officer position. At this point, the utility industry will be transformed from a product-centered, supply-based business model to a customer-centric, demand-based one that delivers innovative customer-oriented services supported and promoted by real-time, personalized customer communications across multiple customer-facing channels.